Somebody Down There Likes Me (Robert Lukins, A&U)

Somebody Down There Likes Me begins with a limousine pulling up to a defunct gas station near a United States ghost town, setting an apt tone for a novel that sharply portrays the dubiously earned wealth of the billionaire Gulch family and the ruinous effects of this wealth. I’m a sucker for novels about family secrets, especially when they involve filthy rich characters, and Robert Lukins has crafted an engrossing train-wreck of a story that’s both insightful and quite moving. The story is knitted together deftly through alternating point-of-view chapters from the four family members, following the announcement of the imminent arrest of the Gulch parents. There’s Kick, the family’s black-sheep daughter, living a desolate life far from her origins; Lincoln, her brother, a Norman Bates type who gets irritated ‘that he can get irritated at all’; their mother, Honey, a businessperson constantly considering the smartest move in every situation, suppressing any tender instincts; and Fax, the patriarch, mentally adrift in the ‘featureless sands’ of his life. With dark humour, class-consciousness and often beautiful prose, Lukins (The Everlasting Sunday, Loveland) explores themes familiar in the zeitgeist and captured by shows such as Succession and The Fall of the House of Usher. In Lukins’s hands, this telling of the overdue unravelling of the Gulch family is a tightly crafted study of wealth, power, complicity and resentment. This novel will appeal to readers of Claire Vaye Watkins and, if I’m any judge, may even elevate Lukins to some global renown.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Melissa Mantle is a bookseller with a master's degree in literature. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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